Veteran journalists seek justice in Iraqi Kurdistan

May 17, 2010 12:04 PM ET

Last week, a number of prominent journalists who cover Iraqi Kurdistan wrote an open letter to the president of the Kurdish Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, and the president of Iraq, Talal Talabani, calling on them to bring to an end a sharp rise in violations of press freedom. A journalist was abducted and murdered in the country as recently as May 6.

Below is the letter:

Your excellencies,

As journalists who have covered Iraqi
Kurdistan for many years, we are writing to express our concern over the
apparent deterioration in the right of Kurdish journalists to report and
comment freely and in particular about the recent murder of twenty-three-year-old
journalist Zardasht Othman. The Kurdistan Regional Government condemned the
killing and stated, “This is a
heinous crime and a crime designed to undermine the security of the region and
to attack the life and liberty of the people. The relevant security forces are
closely investigating this case and are doing their utmost to bring the
perpetrators to justice.” We echo the condemnation of the Kurdistan Regional
Government. However, given the credible allegations of security force
involvement in Mr. Othman’s kidnapping on 4 May and his brutal murder
immediately afterwards, we respectfully request that an independent
investigation be empowered. Mr. Othman, as you know, was handcuffed, tortured
and shot dead, before his family were told to collect his body from the
outskirts of Mosul.
We further request a public commitment from the Kurdistan Regional Government
to Articles V and VI of the Kurdish Press Law of 2008 calling for severe
punishment of anyone, including the security forces, who attacks members of the
press.

The murder of Mr.
Othman, a university student who had written critically of the leadership and
published biting satires of a kind that are tolerated by leaders in other
democracies, is only the latest in a series of assaults on independent
journalism in Iraqi Kurdistan. Last year, Kurdish journalist Soran Mama Hama
was murdered in front of his house in Kirkuk
after he had written articles that offended government officials. On 20 April
2010, regional security forces attacked at least sixteen Kurdish journalists
reporting student demonstrations in Suleimania. Some were beaten severely by
police, and others had their cameras taken and their photographs destroyed. On
28 April, police interrogated the editor of the respected journal Hawlati, Kamal Rauf, for five hours
after he published information on the absence of public services in a Kurdish
village. Another editor, Fuad Sadiq, lost his job for criticizing Prime
Minister Barham Salih. Hakim Qubadi Jali Zada, a Kurdish jurist and poet, was
dismissed as a judge in Suleimania for writing an article in the newspaper Hawal that disparaged aspects of the
judicial system. Despite these and other assaults on Kurdish journalists, no
one has been apprehended or charged in a court of law. The effect of the
government’s inaction has been to intimidate Kurdish journalists, many of whom
rightly fear for their lives.

During the Kurdish
struggle against the Iraqi dictatorship, when Kurds suffered savage repression
and attempted genocide, the maxim was that the “Kurds had no friends but the
mountains.” The truth was that the Kurds had friends in the free press, many of
whose members risked their lives to cover Iraqi government crimes against the
people. Dana Adams Schmidt of the New
York Times in 1963, Peter Sturken of ABC News in 1975, Gwynne Roberts after
the massacre at Hallabja and many others raised the alarm to an outside world
that would otherwise have been ignorant of the crimes committed against the
Kurds. We were always grateful for the protection that the Pesh Merga afforded
us on hazardous missions in northern Iraq. All of us who send you this
letter have covered your country at great personal risk going back to the
revolts against the Iraqi dictatorship by the father of the Kurdish national
movement, Mulla Mustafa Barzani. Some of our colleagues, including Gad Gross
and Kaveh Golestani, died to bring the news of the Kurds’ suffering to the world.
On many occasions, when you were in hiding in the mountains or in exile, both
of you told us of your intention to end the abuses of freedom, including the
suppression of the press, in your country. We who write to you today do so as
friends rather than opponents, as correspondents who believed your words when
you were seeking power and as journalists who respectfully remind you of your
past commitment to your people’s liberty. This liberty includes the right to
expose corruption and, yes, to satirise national leaders.

Kurdish journalism has
an honorable tradition dating to the first Kurdish-language newspaper, Kurdistan, in Cairo in 1898. In solidarity with our Kurdish
colleagues and as friends of the Kurds, we urge you not to imitate the
oppressive policies of the regime your people struggled against for so long.

Yours sincerely,

Geraldine Brooks

Gérard Chaliand

Charles Glass

Yves Harté

Cécile Hennion

David Hirst

Jim Hoagland

Marc Kravetz

Chris Kutschera

Quil Lawrence

François-Xavier Lovat

David McDowall

Edward Mortimer

Fabrice Moussus

Jim Muir

Jonathan Randal

Hazhir Teimourian

Martin Woollacott

2 comments

Thanks alot for your support. we really need support and solidarity from you and all journalists organizations in all around the world. This case also needs support from world governments to investigate the case to declare the government in kurdistan and Iraq as terrorist. Although, our people in Kurdistan have protested, and spoke out so strongly against that barbaric crime, which never seen protesting like that in our history. But still without your solidarity it is goona be hard to fight terrorism in Kurdistan.

thank you,
Kazhal Hama Rashid
a Kurdish journalist currently living in Toronto, Canada

I am outraged and deeply concern about the aggressive reaction of Kurdish authority in northern Iraq towards writers and journalists. It beggars belief that Kurd leadership so far has not firmly investigated this murder and past assassinations, of those who simply would like to practice their freedom of expression. Kurd leadership must set up an independent investigation team to find out who were the perpetrators of these crimes, and bring them to justice soon.

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